SEO levers are the fundamental areas of focus used by an SEO program to drive optimization and growth. As stated in the provided reference, SEO levers are at the top of the matrix and represent five buckets describing the key areas of optimization and growth at an SEO program's disposal.
These levers serve as strategic tools, each influencing specific aspects of a website's visibility and performance in search engine results. Within an SEO framework or matrix, the dots in the grid represent the relationship between a lever and the metric that it could directly influence, illustrating how actions taken within one area can impact measurable outcomes like rankings, traffic, or conversions.
The Role of SEO Levers
In practice, SEO levers are the actionable categories where SEO professionals spend their time and resources. By working on these distinct areas, they aim to improve a website's chances of ranking higher, attracting relevant users, and achieving business goals. Think of them as the primary dials you can turn in your SEO strategy.
While the reference describes them generally as "five buckets," the specific categories can sometimes vary slightly depending on the framework used. However, they typically encompass the core components of a comprehensive SEO strategy.
Common Examples of SEO Levers
Based on standard SEO practices and aligning with the concept of distinct areas of optimization, the five typical SEO levers often include:
- Technical SEO: Focuses on website and server optimizations to help search engine spiders crawl and index your site more effectively.
- Examples: Site speed improvements, mobile-friendliness, structured data markup, XML sitemaps, robot.txt files.
- On-Page SEO: Optimizing individual web pages to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines.
- Examples: Keyword research, optimizing title tags, meta descriptions, header tags (H1-H6), content quality, image alt text.
- Off-Page SEO (Link Building): Actions taken outside of your website to impact your rankings within search engine results pages (SERPs).
- Examples: Acquiring high-quality backlinks from other reputable websites, social media marketing signals.
- Content: Creating valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience.
- Examples: Blog posts, articles, guides, videos, infographics, keyword integration within content.
- User Experience (UX): Ensuring users have a positive and seamless experience when interacting with your website. While often related to Technical and On-Page, a good UX inherently improves SEO signals like dwell time and bounce rate.
- Examples: Intuitive site navigation, clear calls to action, readability, mobile responsiveness, site speed (overlaps with Technical).
These five areas represent the primary levers an SEO program can pull to influence a website's performance metrics and achieve overall growth objectives.
